SOURCE: A review of Damage, in Times Literary Supplement, February 12, 1993, p. 17.

In the following review, Lezard offers an unfavorable assessment of the film Damage.

On paper, the film Damage has everything going for it: directed by Louis Malle, starring Jeremy Irons and Miranda Richardson, screenplay by David Hare, based on a trashy novel by Josephine Hart. What could, possibly go wrong? And yet, as it turns out, Malle has produced something that at times is worse than his source material.

The plot of Damage is simple. Stephen Fleming, a doctor-turned-politician (Jeremy Irons) meets, and instantly falls for, Anna Barton, his son’s fiancée (Juliette Binoche). She falls for him. They have not so much an affair as a succession of steamy liaisons, the last of which Fleming’s son Martyn (Rupert Graves) bursts in on; shocked, he falls down a stairwell and dies. Fleming Senior resigns, his...